


Red Sky at Night

by Mickleditch



Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), The Mummy Series
Genre: Biting, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26812978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mickleditch/pseuds/Mickleditch
Summary: Ardeth regarded him. "No," he said, at length, "not money. You are here for treasure, but not gold. You are here because you want what Egypt has to offer."
Relationships: Ardeth Bay/Jonathan Carnahan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 62





	Red Sky at Night

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All characters property of Stephen Sommers and Alphaville Films.
> 
> Author's Notes: First I wanted Ardeth to be an actual vampire, but I couldn't figure out how to make that work, so... eh.

"O'Connell I understand," Ardeth Bey said. He tossed another stick onto the fire, his sleeve flapping a little in the night wind, and the flames blazed up momentarily before settling down again. "Even before I learned that he was Medjai, I knew that he was following his destiny, to be a protector of the living against the souls of the dead. Your sister I understand. I am still not fully certain that I understand you. I think that you also first came to Egypt in search for something; something which drives you."

"I'm a treasure hunter," Jonathan said. He lifted his shoulders, both to visibly shrug off the other man's statement, and to stretch out his aching back. He felt tired, energy and adrenaline both wrung out of him, but he didn't think that he would sleep yet, for a few reasons. "I came out here with Evy for one reason: there's a chance - a bit of an outside chance, I grant you, but still a chance - that I'm going to walk away from all of this in the end with a bloody great sackful of loot. Enough to pay off my debts for the rest of my life. Or until the end of the year, anyway."

Ardeth regarded him for a few moments. "No," he said, at length, as though Jonathan's personal convictions were something to be debated, "not money. You are here for treasure, but not gold. You are here because you want what Egypt has to offer."

"As far as I can see, it doesn't have anything to offer apart from sand, sweat, and mummies. No offence," he added, as his brain gave him a poke to remind him that he was talking to a native. Not that he should really have had to remember, given that he was half one himself. Egyptian on one side, and on the other, a few generations or so back, bog-Irish. Bugger of a combination. Jonathan felt himself shiver, not from cold; more like the beginnings of the coarser shake that he was getting too familiar with these days. 

"Are you unwell? If you were injured, I would have recognized it earlier."

"I don't expect you to recognize the DTs," Jonathan said. He saw the faint frown that creased Ardeth's forehead in response, and tried to clarify himself. "Booze, my friend. Or the memory of the booze. Body gets lonely for it when it's too used to it... something like that."

He waved his hand, dismissively. The Medjai had invited them to come to share in the victory celebrations, and the sounds of the camp overlaid the night: the raising and lowering of hooves to earth from the horses, the voices of the men; the camaraderie of the twelve tribes after their day of chases and fighting and escapes. A little way off, someone was singing a song, one of glory and thanksgiving, although he couldn't quite decipher all the words. You couldn't live in Cairo for so many years without speaking at least a sort of passable, kitchen Arabic, but the poetry was Evy's domain. 

Rick had celebrated enthusiastically, the rescue of his son and the resurrection of his wife, and Jonathan had celebrated too, because he loved Alex and he loved Evy, and he did think he could rather get used to feeling like a hero. But when he'd finally let them be alone, all full of each other, he'd still been left there with the same nagging incompleteness. Like the missing parts in the canopic jars, dry, hungry, things; an unfinished representation of a life.

Ardeth looked at him. Everything about him was darkness. Black boots, black shemagh about his face, mysterious in his robes. The shadow of him cast by the fire seemed to writhe and dance. "When a man drinks, it is usually to hide from himself."

"We've all got our bad habits."

"But we cannot hide forever. If we try to, eventually we will go out searching, until that which we tried to hide from finds us instead."

Jonathan squinted at him. "Meaning? Sorry, I've never done the abstract philosophical thing."

"Meaning that you always return to Egypt in the hope of digging up that which you keep buried in England." Ardeth shrugged, softly. "Egypt is a dangerous land. Always, since the time of the Pharaohs, the time of the old gods, there has been evil here. Bloodshed. Pain."

"Believe me, I have absolutely no desire to dig up any more old gods. I intend to leave that to my sister. And my nephew, if he has the bad luck to take after his mother."

"I believe you. But you desire danger, nonetheless."

"I suppose you heard Evy say that our parents were adventurers?"

"Yes, I did. You, though, want more than adventure."

Jonathan's mother and father had spent most of their lives travelling, always seeking out the foreign and the romantic. His father had had money, and lots of it, old money of the kind so assured of itself that it doesn't come with a shred of hesitation about spending it on personal pleasures, whims, and vocations, and it had been that on which he had come back to the old world, to marry his wife, unearth skeletons and their secrets, and plunder ancient pyramids to his heart's content. Evy had inherited that love from him. Jonathan was an Egyptologist too, but he wondered if he'd inherited more of the skeletons, imaginings that had grown darker over the years; unnameable longings. 

He sometimes thought the desert might cater better to him. More exotic. More - unprejudiced? Even through a bottle of whiskey, there were things that Jonathan shrank - literally and figuratively - from in London that he found himself aching for again in Cairo. The massive gaping maw of the desert, and all that darkness. He'd grown to both fear, and, oddly, appreciate it.

Something that could swallow him up and change everything that he'd thought he'd known about himself. 

He had the physical awareness of newly rising excitement, his heart fluttering a little in his chest, the pit of his stomach becoming hollow and alive. 

"It's a long story," he said. "Some of it's missing."

"Then let me try to finish it." Ardeth paused. "I think that you are a lover of other men, Jonathan Carnahan, because you sense that a man can give you what you crave. And take from you, too, because you have a great deal to give. And yet, for all that, you have not been able to let a man love you. You have not been able to speak the necessary words."

Neither of them said anything again for a long moment. Ardeth seemed as though he would have been content to leave it that way, only watching him quietly. Finally, Jonathan said, "People are often attracted to evil, aren't they? To pain. Depravity, I suppose is what I mean."

"As evil is the mirror image of the goodness of God, so pain is that of the most profound bliss. They are only two facets of the same jewel, and one could not exist without the second. It completes it. Just as you and I, I suspect, might complete one another."

The conviction that Ardeth sensed Jonathan's growing arousal, _wanted_ his arousal, was enough to prick tears behind his eyelids.

"I've never understood God all that well, actually. I'd like to understand you."

"All there is to understand is that I have spent a lifetime training in bloodshed and pain. And you - you have spent a lifetime knowing that one day you would have to decide what it is that you want the most."

Ardeth stood, then. In the face of Jonathan's sudden need, he seemed more than handsome, something closer to compelling. When Jonathan followed his lead and rose to take the hand that he held out, Ardeth, unexpectedly, moved into him, brushing his lips against his skin in a motion more intimate than kissing, as though he too sought something tonight that only Jonathan could give. 

"Come to bed," he said. 

The darkness went on forever, and the tent was a shelter made of darkness, a refuge for everything too shameful and too magnificent to face the light of day. When the flaps closed behind them, Ardeth turned Jonathan to face him and leaned over him again, kissing his forehead this time, and Jonathan found himself angling his head back so that he himself could kiss the other man's throat in return, then the curve of his jaw. With his left hand, Ardeth reached for him, grasping him before he could think to step away again, splaying his fingers at the small of Jonathan's back. His grip was tight. 

"There are many evils in the world," he said, softly, "evils so strong that we despaired of ever defeating them - have wept because we feared that they might become one with us. But tonight you and I will find our way, and our tears will be tears of joy, not grief."

"Will you stop talking, you damned fool, and kiss me," Jonathan said, hearing his own voice shake, and as Ardeth kissed him, he slid beneath the soft blackness of his robes and felt his body underneath. The layers, as the Medjai eased his way out of them, peeled softly to the floor like the shed feathers of a great hawk, joined by Jonathan's as Ardeth stripped him, shirt first to expose him so that he could lick at bare skin. _Don't pick them up yet. Don't bother picking them up ever again._

Then, swiftly, on the sleeping mat and pillows that made up Ardeth's bed. He said nothing as he turned Jonathan onto his back, nothing until he knelt before him, took hold of his thighs, and spread them open, settling Jonathan's legs around him, lifting his knees. His cock came to rest, hard and pulsing, in the crevice of Jonathan's buttocks, and Jonathan felt himself instinctively reach to touch it, as if his own flesh begged him to do this, as if touching Ardeth was the same as touching himself. It was that depth of connection.

Ardeth nuzzled his shoulder, the crook of his neck.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"No," Jonathan said. "No." He said it over and over.

Ardeth inclined his head in acceptance. "And nor am I afraid."

When he bit, it was almost beyond the threshold of anything that Jonathan could stand, and for a fleeting instant, he thought he might have fought it. Might have tried to run again, like he'd always run from mummies, run from himself, run from anything that shocked and scared him and tried to make him face what he couldn't. But then his own arms were finding their way around Ardeth and his fingers were crawling like spiders over the hard muscles, and he was beginning to scratch with his nails. Jerkily at first, then raking and gashing. Deeper with each pass, like he couldn't seem to get enough, like he wanted to crawl inside him; slippery furrows, smearing Ardeth's back with the blood. 

The Medjai ripped at him, consuming, and blood burst in streams across Jonathan's chin as his own teeth came down on the other man's shoulder and he started in turn to tear the flesh there. He felt Ardeth, somehow buried inside him now, fucking him to the core, timing each thrust to draw out the marvellous ache Jonathan felt each time he came back into him. The heat of his body spread into Jonathan, the life and strength of him becoming his and the scent of him shaking him to the bone, and blood welled up over his tongue, too hot, too bitter, too everything, too sweet for him to stand. He moaned at last, and couldn't tell whose throat the moan came from or whose pain it was any more. 

Pain that wasn't pain exactly, but something closer to a blessing, a hymn, a dark red _hamd_ of praise, of lovely and exquisite emotion. 

It wasn't just completion. It was perfection.

Ardeth kissed him then, turning to him, his cheeks stained and his lips and tongue crimson with Jonathan's blood. Jonathan tasted sweat and copper and sand, and saw, when he looked into the other man's eyes, the years-old anguish rooted as deeply as his own, and the ecstacy of it all. There was no shame in what he felt, after all; there was only awe and wonder.

The miracle was that he'd found somebody else who believed that, too.


End file.
